When Bernie Sanders famously said: “Enough of those damned emails,” many thought they’d heard the death-knell of that wearisome argument. Just this week, President Obama referred to it as “all that noise,” designed to confuse new voters about Hillary’s trustworthiness. The concept of “noise” comes from cybernetics and it refers to anything that interferes with a message sent by one party to another–we laymen also know it as static. Sad to say, we are all familiar with static on our cell phones which keep us from hearing the other person’s words and messages. The static in this case, as we all know by now, are the dark references to some of Hillary’s emails. Of the emails, President Obama also noted that while Clinton, while serving as his Secretary of State, made an “honest mistake” by using a private email server, as it was now “being blown up into just some crazy thing,” which will affect new voters when they hear “all that noise.” Why now, you may ask, all of this focused static. Well,...

Trump’s post-convention 6 point bounce was wiped clean as Hillary emerged from the Democratic Convention with a 6 to 9 point lead, according to most polls. One reason was the well produced program that the Demos put on. Part of it was due to Trump’s own continued poor judgment, his foot-in-mouthitis as he chose to denigrate a gold star mother who son, Capt. Humayun Khan, heroically gave his life in Afghanistan saving others during a suicide bombing. As usual Donald was his own worst enemy. Not only did Trump, who never served in our military himself, insult Mrs Khan and her religion, but he doubled down the next day, expanding his attacks on the Khans. This quickly drew the vocal ire of most mainstream Republicans and veterans throughout the country. The Veterans of Foreign Wars joined in the condemnation of Trump, as they, too, wondered about whether such a man could be qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. As if that wasn’t enough, Trump took on fellow Republicans Sen. John McCain and Speaker Paul...

Hillary Clinton won California big, by 12 percentage points, in what figures to have ended whatever slim chance Bernie Sanders had in the Democratic race. This race was assumed by many to be much closer based upon late polls that had her leading Sanders by a shrinking 2 percent. How wrong they were. Why? In all fairness, an outlier poll, by the LA Times/USC, had Clinton winning by 10 percent. And the reason they called it more accurately is that they ultimately relied on their model of the “likely voter” rather than their sample of eligible voters. By the way, when the “eligible voters” sample was used in their poll, it yielded results similar to the other polls showing the race a virtual dead-heat. So the more refined “likely voter” sample generated much more accurate results. A little background will help in understanding why different samples resulted in such wildly varying results, and why polling techniques that worked in several prior primaries weren’t appropriate for the California race. You will...

After having become the presumptive nominee of the Republican Party, the latest polls show that Donald Trump has received a bump in the polls, and is nearly tied with Hillary Clinton. Since Hillary held a large, if not commanding, lead over Trump just a couple of weeks ago, this has many Clinton supporters in near panic. What does this recent surge by Donald really mean? For one thing upon becoming either party’s standard-bearer, candidates usually receive a bump in the polls. The same thing happens following the party conventions in the summer. These latter poll jumps are most often short-lived as one party convention is followed in short order by the other’s. However, understanding the bump that the winning candidate gets in the polls upon becoming a party’s presumptive nominee is a bit more complicated, since there is often a significant period when the primary races are over between parties. Let’s take look at the mechanics of this kind of poll bump. During the primary campaign, a significant number of supporters of the...

Donald Trump has now been crowned King of the Republican Party. It’s semi-official now. Hillary’s strategy of minority and women should net her most of the large population states. But what about the states with low minority citizenship? Those mostly went for Bernie and Donald. Well, you first have to differentiate between those that are Trump strongholds according to the polls–despite Trump’s high “unfavorables.” The others are considered borderline states, i.e., Trump may be favored, but under the right circumstances they are winnable for Hillary, even in the face of her own very high “unfavorable” ratings–again according to the latest polls. On paper Hillary has a tough challenge to win any of those borderline states. Her minority base just isn’t there. And face it, among blue-collar white male voters, and their issues with her gender, combined with Tump’s already demonstrated appeal with to them, Hillary Clinton is not going to gain much traction. What potential inroads she does have, will not work without a new zinger issue that hits home. And “home” to blue...

Without an early debate, or a perceived competitive contest, there has been less media attention, and fewer national polls of the Democratic race. Most of the major pollsters were two to three weeks outdated on the Democratic side by the time the media were focusing on the effects of some outrageous “Donaldisms” on the Republican electorate. Those older polls showed Hillary with a commanding lead over Bernie Sanders, and beating all of the Republican contenders handily–with her early numbers when matched against Donald Trump among her highest. Conversely, Bernie Sanders, with low name-recognition was shown doing much poorer in those match-ups against the Republican hopefuls than Hillary…Though I agree with him on many issues, I can’t imagine Bernie Sanders’ status as a Socialist allowing him to win the general election for president. America just isn’t ready for that. It would be a George McG0vern-Richard Nixon race all over again.